Cognitive Science, Volume 46, Issue 3, March 2022.

The aim of this study was to investigate the impact of different coping styles on situational coping in everyday life situations and gender differences. An ecological momentary assessment study with the mobile health app TrackYourStress was conducted with 113 participants. The coping styles Positive Thinking, Active Stress Coping, Social Support, Support in Faith, and Alcohol and Cigarette Consumption of the Stress and Coping Inventory were measured at baseline. Situational coping was assessed by the question “How well can you cope with (...) your momentary stress level” over 4 weeks. Multilevel models were conducted to test the effects of the coping styles on situational coping. Additionally, gender differences were evaluated. Positive Thinking and Active Stress Coping had significant positive impacts on situational coping in the total sample. For women, Social Support had a significant positive effect on situational coping. For men, Active Stress Coping had a significant positive effect on situational coping. Women had higher scores on the SCI scale Social Support than men. These results suggest that different coping styles could be more effective in daily life for women than for men. Taking this into account, interventions tailored to users’ coping styles might lead to better coping outcomes than generalized interventions. (shrink)

Education, Religion and Society celebrates the career of Professor John Hull of the University of Birmingham, UK, the internationally renowned religious educationist who has also achieved worldwide fame for his brilliant writings on his experience, mid-career, of total blindness. In his outstanding career he has been a leading figure in the transformation of religious education in English and Welsh state schools from Christian instruction to multi-faith religious education and was the co-founder of the International Seminar on Religious Education and (...) values. John Hull has also made major contributions to the theology of disability and the theological critique of the "money culture." This volume brings together leading international scholars to honour John Hull's contribution, with a focus on furthering scholarship in the areas where he has been active as a thinker. The book offers a critical appreciation of his contribution to religious education and practical theology, and goes on to explore the continuing debate about the role of religious education in promoting international understanding, intercultural education and human rights education. A possible basis for integrating Islamic education into Western education is suggested and the contribution of the philosophy of religion to pluralistic religious education is outlined. The contributors also deal with issues relating to indoctrination, racism and relationship in Christian religious aspects, and examines aspects of the the theology of social exclusion and disability. (shrink)

Advertising spokespersons have been defending their industry against tobacco and alcohol advertising bans by claiming the bans will do no good. In mature categories, they say advertising does not attract new users, but merely causes people to switch brands. This article contends that such an argument is based on legal pragmatism and will eventually fail because the public does not believe it. It suggests an ethical defense based on the public's right to know.

How can we, as individuals and as members of religious, educational, and/ or social institutions, more adequately respond to the crises of sexual abuse that have come to light in recent years? This paper will address this question through the philosophical lens of Paul Ricoeur. The argument proposed here is that through Ricoeur’s hermeneutics of testimony, responsibility, and recognition, we can begin to approach, address, and evaluate the crises of sexual abuse we face by grounding our ethical reflections, and actions, (...) within a more robust philosophical framework. Therefore, this paper will proceed as follows. The first three sections will investigate Ricoeur’s writings in order to glean from them three distinct hermeneutical approaches to three different sets of criteria at play in contemporary crises of sexual abuse: first, a hermeneutics of testimony, related to memory and history; second, a hermeneutics of responsibility, related to authority and justice; and, finally, a hermeneutics of recognition, related to forgiveness and forgetting. Insofar as each of these hermeneutical approaches offers us some insight into the problematics underlying crises of sexual abuse, the fourth section will offer an evaluation of these approaches by focusing on the specific case of the sexual abuse crisis in the Catholic Church. The final section will consider possible avenues for resolution of these crises through Ricoeur’s notion of exceptional “states of peace,” at the heart of which lies mutual recognition. My hope is that this contribution provides new avenues for conversation and deliberation, as well as new resources and frameworks for articulating and implementing responsible action in the face of sexual abuse. (shrink)

Extended revised edition of "Logica" (2003).

Italian translation of "Schaum's Outline of Theory and Problems of Logic" (1988).

Biomedical research on humans is an important part of medical progress. But, when lives are at risk, safety and ethical practices need to be the top priority. The need for the committees that regulate and oversee such research -- institutional review boards, or IRBs -- is growing. IRB members face difficult decisions every day. Evaluating the Science and Ethics of Research on Humans is a guide for new and veteran members of IRBs that will help them better understand the issues (...) involved and the tasks they will be required to perform. The most important purpose of an IRB is to protect the lives of human participants. For three major research areas -- drugs, medical devices, and genetic information -- Dennis J. Mazur shares the methods he has found useful in protecting human participants through the systematic review of scientific protocols and informed consent forms and through adherence to the federal regulations that apply. New members will gain understanding of how proposed research projects are to be reviewed from both scientific and ethical dimensions, how and when to ask key questions of principal investigators, how to work with principal investigators and research teams to ensure the best protection of human participants, and why to schedule regularly spaced reviews of a project that may have adverse outcomes. Based on Mazur's thirty years of research experience, this accessible and informative guide will give all IRB members the tools they need to protect human lives and facilitate the research process. (shrink)

An outline of the material covered in courses on Formal and Informal Logic. The outline includes chapters on mathematical approaches to logic as well as on fallacies, deduction and induction, probability, and other major topics. Logic is traditionally taught by means of problem solving exercises, so the subject is well suited to a Schaum's Outline approach.

Culture influences what we attend to, encode, remember and think about. Easterners are said to attend more to the relationship between focal objects and their context while Westerners disentangle focal objects from their context. Simply put, Easterners process information holistically and Westerners analytically. Psychosocial factors, like Fear of Isolation, have been proposed as a possible mechanism for cultural differences in terms of information processing. While East vs. West cultural differences are well researched, the monolithic notion that all Westerners process information (...) analytically was questioned in the research presented below. In this paper, we present a study conducted with two Western cultures and one Eastern where we induced the chronic psychosocial factor: Fear of Isolation, and measured its influence on information processing. We found that Italian participants processed information more holistically than us Americans, and that Italians were more similar to Chinese than us Americans. (shrink)

In searching for appropriate business ethics for the 21st century, it is necessary to embrace a range of inter-related disciplines such as psychology and ethics, but also areas including philosophy, politics and religion. This text acts as an example of interdisciplinary scholarship.

In this article, we discuss the ethical dimensions for the prescribing behaviours of opioids for a chronic pain patient, a scenario commonly witnessed by many physicians. The opioid epidemic in the USA and Canada is well known, existing since the late 1990s, and individuals are suffering and dying as a result of the easy availability of prescription opioids. More recently, this problem has been seen outside of North America affecting individuals at similar rates in Australia and Europe. We argue that (...) physicians are also confronted with an ethical crisis where a capitalist-consumerist society is contributing to this opioid crisis in which societal, legal and business interests push physicians to overprescribe opioids. Individual physicians often find themselves unequipped and unsupported in attempts to curb the prescribing of opioid medications and balance competing goals of alleviating pain against the judicious use of pain medications. Physicians, individually and as a community, must reclaim the ethical mantle of our profession, through a more nuanced understanding of autonomy and beneficence. Furthermore, physicians and the medical community at large have a fiduciary duty to patients and society to play a more active role in curbing the widespread distribution of opioids in our communities. (shrink)

This volume presents the concept of Ecoscape as spatial interrelations, or spatially patterned processes, that are constitutive of an environment_an ecosystem. Contributors investigate environmental issues concerning the human impact on geohistory, food distribution, genetically modified biota, waste management, scientific mapping, and the rethinking of human identity.

Genetic cancer predisposition testing in the paediatric population poses unique ethical dilemmas. Using the hypothetical example of a teenager with cancer with a high probability of having an underlying cancer predisposition syndrome, we discuss the ethical considerations that affect the decision-making process. Because legally these decisions are made by parents, genetic testing in paediatrics can remove a child’s autonomy to preserve his or her own ‘open future’. However, knowledge of results confirming a predisposition syndrome can potentially be beneficial in modifying (...) treatment and surveillance plans and enabling at-risk family members to obtain cascade testing for themselves. Considering virtue ethics to envision the best characters of the patient, parents and healthcare providers can guide them to the better choice to test or not to test, with the ultimate goal of achieving the best outcome for survival andeudaimonia, human flourishing reliably sought out. (shrink)

Though virtually unknown before 1851, the exceptionally scenic Yosemite Valley of California soon attracted continuing attention as a geological anomaly. J. D. Whitney, state geologist and Harvard professor, advocated a tectonic theory of its origin. Despite its seemingly official status, Whitney's theory even failed to convince some of his own subordinates. An unexpectedly effective dissenter not associated with Whitney was John Muir, then a tatterdemalion vagrant. Though the two men never met, conflict between their inflexible and mutually exclusive geological (...) theories persisted well into the twentieth century. Eventually, both dogmatists were proved wrong, but Muir had come closer to what we now accept. Several geological and geomorphological issues of importance entered into later discussions of Yosemite. The whole controversy, moreover, illuminates such further issues as the influence of preconceptions on theorizing, the role of authority in science, and the interactions of professionals with amateurs. (shrink)

Duncan Pritchard has recently defended a view he calls ‘epistemological disjunctivism’, largely inspired by John McDowell. I argue that Pritchard is right to associate the view with McDowell, and that McDowell’s ‘inference-blocking’ argument against the sceptic succeeds only if epistemological disjunctivism is accepted. However, Pritchard also recognises that epistemological disjunctivism appears to conflict with our belief that genuine and illusory experiences are indistinguishable (the ‘distinguishability problem’). Since the indistinguishability of experiences is the antecedent in the inference McDowell intends to (...) block, I suggest that his argument rests on an inconsistent set of premises. In support of this, I show that Pritchard’s response to the distinguishability problem is incompatible with the conclusion of the ‘inference-blocking’ argument, and that the response available in McDowell’s work relies on a mistaken conception of fallibility. Either McDowell must deny the sceptic’s premise that perceptual experiences are indistinguishable, or he must give up his conclusion that perceptual warrant can be indefeasible. (shrink)

Lawrence J. Dennis’s intellectual biography of John L. Childs, a leading figure in twentieth-century American educational philosophy between 1930 and 1960, traces Childs’s influence not only on education but also on midcentury politics, economics, and social issues. A disciple of John Dewey and an associate of William Heard Kilpatrick, George S. Counts, Boyd Bode, and other key figures in modern American education, Childs laid the philosophic basis for social reconstruction and became an important contributor to and interpreter (...) of pragmatism as a philosophy of education. Dennis describes how the Christian beliefs so central to Childs as a youth led him as a young man into a decade of YMCA missionary work in China. When he returned to the United States, Childs studied with John Dewey, later coauthoring two chapters of a book with him. Though Childs became a recognized expert on Dewey’s educational theory, he eventually became more of a reconstructionist than his mentor. Dennis carefully recounts Childs’s long association with Dewey as well as his political activities in the American Labor Party, the Liberal Party, and the American Federation of Teachers. He likewise traces the debate about metaphysics, democracy, and indoctrination that ensued among the foremost pragmatists of the day. (shrink)

Different aspects of people's interactions with money are best conceptualized using the drug and tool theories. The key question is when these models of money are most likely to guide behavior. We suggest that the Drug Theory characterizes motivationally active uses of money and that the Tool Theory characterizes behavior in motivationally cool situations. (Published Online April 5 2006).